I've refrained from participating in these intellectual property discussions, but I want to make a few points.
It's wrong to steal, regardless of the victim of the theft, be it a corporation, rock star, or struggiling artist. While I do listen to youtube clips - prety much like I listen to music on the radia - I always legally purchase any music I want to listen to on a repeated basis, and I insist that my kids do likewise.
Recorded music has always presented opportunities to steal ("pirate") intellectual property. Prior to recordings, if you wanted to hear an artist or group, you had no choice but to hear them perform live. Once recordings were available, it became possible, in principle at least, to illegally copy a recording and distribute the copies. Originally, the practical barriers to that included cost (equipment, media, etc.), time, and quality (generation loss).
As technology improved, the ease of copying music went up exponentially. The risk of theft was relatively low with printed sheet music up to the latter part of the 20th century. The introduction of xerographic copying was a sea change in that area, and there was significant concern expressed by the owners of copyrights over this newfound capability. Audio cassettes opened up another new avenue for theft, and organized groups exploited it. At this time - early 1970s - it still took specialized equipment and substantial effort to profit from illegal copies, so the practice was not a huge problem.
The introduction of text/graphics documents and dynamic media - music and video - in computer-readable (and -storable and -copyable) formats opened the floodgates, and the internet was the channel for the flood waters. I wish there were some way to prevent theft via this channel, but I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle and won't be put back in. Why companies like Google/Youtube have been given waivers to public performance royalty laws is a huge question in my mind. It appears to me that, if the existing public performance law were applied to those venues, the owners of copyrighted material could get some compensation - say, a similar level to what they get from radio airplay and pefromances in night clubs - for the use of their intellectual property. that wouldn't fix the problem, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Jay
